Crickets chrip. A gentle sound rises like wind-blow fog. Shapes emerge. And so John Sobocan begins to craft around you his minimal, mesmerizing and immersive work, Features of Spheres. Sobocan works from a base of drones and atmospheric sounds, a mix that gives the pieces here depth and character. The atmospheric touches can be simple and soothing, like the night-sounds in “Silence” (which swirls like water, eddies of tone working in endless spirals) and the birdsongs chittering around an expectant air in “Leaves on a Forest Floor.” Or they can be a touch more challenging, like the metallic clank and clatter at the end of “Brother” or the doppler-like string runs punctuating “Ma.” They all add a distinct touch to their respective tracks. Sobocan’s drones are also varied in character and feel. The rasp of the foundation sounds in “Brother” contrast with the softer, hypnotic gauze of “Purple Stretch,” the breezy, paper-thin chords blowing through “Leaves…” or the big, held-breath pads with a pipe-organ timbre in “Glow.” Moreover, Sobocan is clearly mindful of the effect small movements create within a drone structure. He uses it cautiously and effectively to create moments of awareness and kinesis. Purists might argue that this isn’t drone, per se. It does have more overt textures and moments of solid sound, but much of Features of Spheres is like a long exhalation, largely unchanging and gorgeous in its lack of movement. But then you’ll come across a track like “Driving My Mailbox,” with fingerpicked notes, heavy atmospheric icing and a thick, well-layered variety of sounds at play. The more and deeper I listened to Features of Spheres, the more I heard and the more it really took hold of me. A perfect looping disc that doesn’t wear out. It’s original enough in approach and diverse enough in execution to keep a listener well engaged. Features of Spheres is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Check it out at Soundcloud.

Prolific ambient composer Dan Pound sets out to capture the grace of jellyfish in his latest release, Medusazoa. He hits the mark, but don’t expect this to be just a long stretch of burbling, fluid pads of balletic invertebrate motion. They’re here, and the first three minutes of the opener, “Liquid Body,” would have you think that’s the case, but then, quietly, Pound begins to fleck the surface with pinprick hits of percussion and we’re off into interesting territory. There’s a mix of textures at play on Medusazoa. Microbeats, backbeats, sequencer rhythms, guitar work and more find way into Pound’s pieces here, and everything glides into place without rippling the waters. There’s a feeling of balance to the flow; “Liquid Body,” with its microbeats, melts slowly into the classic ambient track, “Under Her Spell,” which then opens into the tick-tock’ing sequenced start of “Living Fossil”–but under the rhythm are slow-moving pads. So each new step comes off as a sensible move and nothing is jarring. It all works. The title track contains an interesting blend of sounds. A poky piano melody one-notes its way around synth structures for a few minutes, then takes a short break while Pound gets a little dark. Watery sounds gurgle underneath. A beat rises up and the piano returns, all the elements landing in a strange but intriguing meld that eventually fades into very quiet drones. Pound breaks out his Fender Strat in the 14-minute “Tentacles,” mixing processed chord cries (very Roach-like in their feel) with patient, straightforward playing. The backdrop, shadowy and a trifle tense, offers a counterpoint. “Bioluminescence” comes back to a basic-feeling waveform ambient motif, rising and falling pads set alongside angelic chords. The closer, “Currents,”  has a watery shimmer accented with electronic bubbles, a warm flow that brings the listener back around to the start. Should go without saying that Medusazoa gets played on loop. It’s a great wind-down listen, offering more than just standard ambient constructs while still packing that spacious/spacey feel. Deep listens are amply rewarded, but Medusazoa is also one that should be allowed to fill the space. Another superb outing from Pound.

Available at Dan Pound’s web site.

The beginning to this standard-issue dark ambient disc is so abrupt and graceless that I nearly stopped listening after just a few seconds. I approach dark ambient with a bit of trepidation to begin with; showing a lack of subtlety doesn’t help. I sat through the predictable first track, a ceaseless wad of dense synthesizer wind in a thick dose of layers, and hoped that Parhelion (aka Ihor Dawidiuk) could redeem himself. Well, Midnight Sun eventually becomes a decent dark piece, if nothing mold-breaking. When Dawidiuk opts to let a thin stream of melodic intent through, the disc becomes more interesting. He shows a real sense of restraint and pacing at these times, a willingness to temper the expected grind-and-clash of the genre with real emotion. The title track, “Lament for Whales” and “Meditation Over Open Waters” benefit from it, and they’re the best stretches on the disc. The last two tracks, “Forgotten Outpost” and “Solitude” also pack a less serrated edge (for the most part), and are the better for it. “Outpost,” which also appeared on a Phantom Channel compilation, takes the greatest degree of departure from the rest of the disc, almost to the point of not quite fitting in. Before diving toward the end into noise, it’s quite light in tone. And “Solitude,” perhaps unsurprisingly, winds down to a very calm end. (And the end of the disc as well.) Dawidiuk’s intent, he says in the liner notes, is to present the duality of arctic landscapes, pairing harshness and beauty. In that regard, Midnight Sun hits the mark, and the disc does have passages that take hold of me. So did he redeem himself from that first note? Considering that I’d go back to listen again and deeper, yes. Dark ambient fans, or at least those who don’t need it to be ultra-heavy, should give Midnight Sun a listen.

Available from Cyclic Law.

So you take two well-known names in synthesizer music, Ron Boots of the Groove Unlimited label and Michel van Osenbruggen (Synth.NL) and you send them on vacation together. Naturally they bring some gear, right? And they do a little jamming. (It’s to be expected, after all.) What comes out of it is Refuge en Verre, a robust collection of pieces with a strong retro feel, reminiscent in spots of Tangerine Dream and J-M Jarre–but not overpoweringly so. Rich, rhythmic and possessing a bit of a swaggering rock ‘n roll stride, Refuge en Verre wastes no time in hooking the listener. The first/title track spreads across 12 minutes to showcase the duo’s work in synths, keyboards and guitar. “Orage d’ete” brings in memories of early Mark Isham in its repeated motif. Percussion here carries the track. I like the way a blues-rock feel translates itself through the keyboards in “Coucher du soleil.” This will come off as a strange analogy, I’m sure, but in my head it sounds like a Scorpions tune, done on synths. Trust me when I tell you this is a good thing. And “Rosee du matin” is a slow, lush track with a little hint of Vangelis at the edges. Admittedly, it helps to have a spot in your listening heart for echoes of old-school synth music if you’re going to dive into Refuge en Verre. Because it’s here, and in spots its perceived age can be a little too pronounced; I find myself wanting to move along during “La Roche-en-Ardenne,” for example, because its 80s-ish cadence feels heavily dated. But it’s more hit than miss, certainly. The combination of styles, the chemistry between Boots and van Osenbruggen, and the love of the genre’s backstory, all come through in the music.

By the way, gentlemen: “Combat des coqs” would be an absolutely unstoppable track, crunchy and muscular and rammed forward by gripping sequencers and a great guitar line (or guitar-sounding keyboard) if it wasn’t for the damned rooster sound effects. Never have I more desperately wanted to punch a chicken in the face.

Old-school fans, take a listen. You’ll find familiar grooving grounds in Refuge en Verre.

Available from Groove Unlimited.

Listening to Mountain Spirits, the new release from Conni St. Pierre, is like listening to several different CDs in a sitting, all of them quite good. In one moment it’s an excellent world-music-influenced disc filled with silken flute; in the next it’s a drifting ambient disc, quietly meditative; in the next it’s a New Age instrumental disc rich with emotional tone. Despite its many sides, Mountain Spirits doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis or feel like it doesn’t know where it ought to be. St. Pierre is talented enough and has spent enough time developing her own musical identity that she can pull them all off perfectly. The sad and soulful “Under the Tundra,” with its halting piano and sighing flute, is a favorite track here, a New Age work constructed almost simply–but with balance. The instruments are played with a clean, understated grace and St. Pierre shows that she knows full well the role silence plays in music. That sense of beautiful sparseness is also felt in “Orogenesis.” A stream of calm, droning pads is offset in spots with deep, breathy flute trills. Never truly a melody, though; more of a call, an expression of feeling played with a sense of insistence. “Snowfields” is a lush piece built on electric piano, the melody high and crystalline, again accented with St. Pierre’s soul-stirring flute work. This piece has an improvised feel, the piano wandering off a bit…in a good way. “Rivulet” find St. Pierre in almost purely ambient territory, a low-key wash of sounds, liquid and cool, like a stream carrying away the last of winter’s ice. This is a nicely layered piece, soothingly hypnotic yet complex and interesting.

Conni St. Pierre has been at this for a number of years, and I’m remiss in only coming to her music now. But if Mountain Spirits is to be my introduction to her work, I couldn’t have picked a better entry point. The diversity of the tracks and the quality of her playing on each has kept Mountain Spirits fresh for me through many listens. I’m impressed with how easily and convincingly she switches identities here. No strain, no lack of honesty. Just gorgeous music. A superb offering from a truly talented artist.

Available from Conni St. Pierre’s web site.

We reviewers like to try to classify things. It just makes the reviewing life easier. Then along c0mes a disc like Picture Palace Music’s Midsummer, stubbornly refusing to be put into any one slot, and we scramble for the right words. In this case, the right word is: fantastic.  Over its ten tracks Midsummer touches on melodic electronica, IDM, prog, synthpop and even a bit of Enigma-esque chant. Lead by Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning, who created PPM “to reproduce the musical dynamic and experiments of old live accompaniment for silent movies,” Midsummer is one of the most infectious discs I’ve heard in a while. If you want to be hooked immediately, head straight into “Midsummer’s Day.” Going from standstill to 60 in the space of a heartbeat, it wraps a catchy, hyperspeed rhythm and melody around a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, sung through a vocoder. Not cool enough for you yet? Let’s add in a guitar riff that pops in out of nowhere to hook you, and then layer on what to these ears sounds like a chorus of football fans singing an anthem from the stands. You may find yourself joining in. I simply can’t get enough of this piece. Which is not to discount the rest of the disc. As noted, Quaeschning, backed by up to six musicians, mixes up tone, temp and approach track by track to keep everything fresh. “Midsummer’s Eve” is an aggressive, guitar-heavy rocker–Quaeschning is joined by axe-men Djirre and Stephen Mortimer–that comes off with a certain spy-movie-soundtrack flair. “Seduction Crossing” is Quaeschning alone with synth, lap-steel guitar and a couple of tubular bells; the resultant feel is exactly what just came into your head–a sequencer-launched mix of classic  TD structure with a shot of Oldfield. The guitar wails that come in around the 3:40 mark are like an extra boost of adrenalin. The three-part suite “Drowning Someone’s Sorrow Into the Ocean” begins as the most ambient piece here, opening in Part I with shadowy drifts lightly punctuated with an electronic pulse. Part II, the longest track on the disc, immediately takes up the pulse and elevates it, moving off into recognizable TD territory, polyrhythms arcing back and forth across the sound. Part III melts into chant and stronger, neo-tribal percussion (the instrument list includes stones and “boomwhackers”). There’s a great stretch beginning at the three-minute mark where the percussion takes over almost completely, just a whisper of a drone sliding beneath it and fading, and it’s absolutely hypnotic. Masterfully, Quaeschning polishes off the disc back in IDM territory with “Midsummer’s Night,” recalling the structure of the earlier “Midsummer” pieces, wrapping them around a sextet of lines from Shakespeare and giving it an 80s synthpop flair. (There’s a metallic flange bouncing around in spots; I won’t tell you which 80s dance hit jumps into my head when I hear it, but I’m willing to bet you hear the same. It’s that recognizable.) With this piece, Quaeschning ensures that our Midsummer ends on a very high note, leaving us energized, cleansed and alive, ready for more.

Midsummer is, beyond doubt, a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.

Available from Groove Unlimited.

If the Windham Hill label was still alive and well and adding new artists, I have no doubt Josh Johnston’s new release, The Shape of Things, would be on it. The disc is apparently a departure for Johnston, who notes on his web site that this is his first instrumental album. May I say: nice departure, sir. The Shape of Things is a calmly beautiful wine-and-candles collection of solo piano works, mostly ballads with an occasional uptempo piece tucked in for good measure. Johnston’s usual avocation as a songwriter peeks through the structure of his lovely piano musings; in tracks like “Nightsong 2” and “FVX,” you can almost see the hollows that are carved out of the sound, pools waiting to be filled with lyrics. The space is there and the piano takes its role as singer. And you get the feeling you’d sing along, the lyrics hitting you right in the heart, if they were there. Other tracks are solid, emotional instrumentals with no lyric aspirations, like “Atlantic” and “Cimiez,” both of which I find very moving and carrying a real sense of narrative. And right when you think he’s just another romantic balladeer, Johnston hits you with the jazzy stride of “The Late Train,” written by fellow Irishman and songwriter Roesy. This song finds the pianist getting a little flashy, packing the tune with stop-and-start flourishes and twinkling runs up and down the keys. He’s clearly making the most of his friend’s composition and having a ball doing it. Across the course of The Shape of Things Johnston plays with intensity and a surplus of feeling; there’s a story in every piece, and if they sound a little familiar it’s only because Johnston is leaving his own footprint on the well-traveled path of solo New Age piano. Pick your three favorite artists in the genre; now set Josh Johnston’s name next to theirs–because before too long it’s going to belong there. This disc is going to catch a lot of airplay on New Age radio shows and podcasts, and with any luck it’s not the last time Johnston decides to go instrumental.

One thing I find a little amusing, now that the meat of the review is done… In much of the publicity I received for The Shape of Things, it was often mentioned that some of the songs were played in the dark during recording, or that Johnston sometimes rehearses in the dark. To me, this is not a selling point. In fact, it made me hesitate to delve into the disc because it put in my head images of off-kilter, improvisational and avant-garde meanderings wherever whatever comes out goes on the record. So, quite honestly, I back-burnered the disc for a while. Which meant I unnecessarily delayed experiencing a very nice album. And I defy anyone to tell me which songs are played in the dark here. They’re all played beautifully, regardless of the ambient lighting. The focus here is the playing, the depth of feeling, the honesty that rings out of each piece.

When you’re ready to wind down, pour yourself a glass, get comfy and give The Shape of Things a listen. Josh Johnston is here, friends.

Available from Josh Johnston’s web site.

Steve Roach synthesizes familiar sonic territories and fresh approaches on his latest episode in the Immersion series, Immersion 5: Circadian Rhythms. If you’ve been following with the Immersion discs, as well as with Roach’s overall sound-story, the elements at play in this two-disc offering will come as a known quantity. The first track, “Phase 1,” opens with the intricate, insectile skitterings that first populated Roach’s Possible Planet, racing back and forth to track out cryptic symbols in your head. From out of the shifting clicks and warbles a misty wash arises that carries the listener easily into “Phase 2.” On this leg of the journey, familiarity comes from the shimmering cry of processed guitar. The rhythms ramp up in energy, urged forward by the sort of analog electro-pulse that’s powered parts of Landmass, Destination Beyond, and The Desert Inbetween. Personally, I really like this aspect of Roach’s work lately. It’s an understated drive that carves out a low-key but distinctly effective sense of shamanic percussion via electric channels. Against those slow-motion guitar chords it feels even more intense. Underscoring it all is a hushed bass line of Fever Dreams ancestry, peering out of the flow. And then Steve Roach manages to surprise me. The crux of “Phase 3,” for most of its half-hour-plus flow, is a repeating melody/motif that–dare I say it?–is kind of bouncy when you get right down to it. It’s light, bolstered at the edges with a sort of metallic, percolating percussive element, and it just lopes its way through swells of synth pads, loaded with tiny sound elements and just enjoying itself as it moves along. It’s a happy sort of sound, and it particularly works because the background sounds retain that minor-chord, deep-exhalation sense. The result is a very yin-yan feeling, active versus drifting, up versus down, energy versus calm. In the end, Roach melts away the rhythm and lets the drift take over with hints of that analog skitter roiling below the surface. And so the circle comes around and begins again for perfect looping–something I’ve been doing a lot of with this.

Or you could segue right into the second disc, the long-form track, “Shroud of Night.” Again, the sounds come like memories from the depths of the Roach library, a constantly moving weave of shimmer and shadow coursing through an endless night. The beatless flow makes a nice counter to its companion disc. Taken on its own, it carries the feel of watching clouds moving across the moon, the mood always on the edge of darkness but retaining a subtle coronal glow. Roach’s guitar textures melt into his pads in a smooth partnership of sound that takes the listener in and down for the duration. Roach notes on his site that this disc was played on infinite loop for a year as he refined it; while I don’t suggest you dedicate that much time to it all at once, I have definitely enjoyed sleeping with this disc playing just at the slightest level of hearing and letting it work its way into my subconscious. Deep but soft, “Shroud of Night” is a classic Roach drift–and Immersion 5: Circadian Rhythms is another superb entry both the series and to the overall Roach canon.

Available at Steve Roach’s web site.

It may be that I’ve gotten to a point where I have certain expectations when I see that I’ve received a disc from the folks at Spotted Peccary–expectations set especially by recent releases from Darshan Ambient, Helpling & Jenkins, and Deborah Martin. So it was a pleasantly interesting surprise to start up Johan Agebjörn’s The Mountain Lake and hear not the sort of cinematic New Age music I thought I’d get but rather a whoosh of electronic wind, a vocoder’d voice sample singing to me and an infectious club-music beat. My first thought was, “Count me in.” The Mountain Lake is more in line with the melodic electronica coming out of the Netherlands than its labelmates, trimmed around the edges with Agebjörn’s appreciation of 80s electronic music. It’s worth noting that said appreciation is always added lightly and well–it never goes overboard into cheesy nostalgia.(Although “The Stones Are Blasted” admittedly comes close.)  You may catch wind of familiar synthpop memes floating around in the sound, but it’s more charm than distraction. What makes the disc stand out is Agebjörn’s skilled hand at tempering his dance-music beats with floaty washes. It’s especially effective in the 10-minute “Zero Gravitation,” where rain-spatter pulses fill in for rhythm–just sparse, small hits that I hesitate to call “glitch” because they seem like more. They’re balanced perfectly with a quiet, minimal wash that easily drifts along. Both sides of the equation carry equal weight; Agebjörn never pushes one over the other, and winds the whole thing down to a beautiful, calm close. “Swimming the Blue Lagoon” is one of the highlights here. It makes excellent use of a chopped vocal sample and hanging stretches where Agebjörn pares the moment back to a minimum of sound and movement to create a space that feels loaded with expectation. The track also happens to be toe-tappingly upbeat. “The Chameleon” also takes advantage of that sort of hesitant, minimal feel blended with tempo. Agebjörn knows how to make you wait to hear the next sound, and he knows how to make you want to wait for it. Most of The Mountain Lake is energetic without having to resort to kicking it up to the frantic pace that many glitch-style musicians do. Agebjörn finds a perfect spot between hit-the-floor danceable grooves and downtempo chill, and it’s a comfortable spot that I’ve spent a lot of time in lately. (For a dose of absolute laid-back chill, head straight for the slow and sexy “Love Ray,” which is so perfectly loungey that it ought to have a cover charge.)

As much as I have enjoyed The Mountain Lake, I have to admit that the two “Underworld Mumble” pieces–super-short burbles of odd, random sound–feel like mistakes to me. They break up the flow of the disc with their abstractness. I’m sure that to the composer they have some sort of thematic necessity, but quite honestly, I first listened to The Mountain Lake in my car and when the first “Mumble” came on, I thought there was something wrong with my CD player. They’re only 15 and 13 seconds respectively, but for this listener that’s 28 wasted seconds in an otherwise rock-solid hour of good electronic music.

The Mountain Lake is quite worth checking out. It’s an interesting departure for Spotted Peccary, and very welcome.

Available from Spotted Peccary.

Imaginary Numbers is experimental composer Betty Widerski’s foray into live looping using mainly violin and viola. To a point, the idea works well. The first three tracks find Widerski, aka Reverse Polish Notation, improvising over her loops, building her sound a phrase at a time. These, to me, are the strongest pieces here. “Rainforest” opens the disc with a slight Asian flair, a swirling arpeggio singing over a dialogue between plucked and bowed melodies. “Ashes”is my favorite piece on the disc, a work that patiently builds from an insistent string pulse and a knock-on-wood rhythm. Where “Rainforest” built its layers quickly, “Ashes” generates a feel like someone else has just walked in and pauses before adding to the movement. There’s a beautiful sadness here, a true ache of the soul in Widerski’s strings.  “Tango de la Luna” is rich and befittingly dramatic. The looping here comes off more as Widerski’s backup combo keeping time rather than a simple repeating backdrop. The appeal in these early tracks is the way they seamlessly blend the intimacy of a chamber music performance with minimalist undertones, paired with the knowledge that Widerski’s doing it alone. Unfortunately, the wheels start to come off for me with “Subterra.” The computer-generated beat feels out of place in the wake of Widerski spending her first tracks investing the listener in the idea of complex rhythmic structures being formed through loops. Granted, this track is (as noted on the cover) an improvisation over computer-generated noises, but the unchanging beat becomes monotonous, and it pulled me away from the more interesting aspects of the piece. She follows with a straightforward version of a traditional tango, “Tango a Unos Ojos,” which she arranged and on which she also plays piano. It’s a temporary, quite lovely, respite before the final two tracks. I have listened to them, but as they are straightforward songs, I would prefer simply to say that I don’t review songs and leave it at that.

The strength of this disc, while it lasts, is Widerski’s playing. The tones are rich and warm. Strings always have such a human sound, even if it’s often mournful or crying. Here they are, in fact, cries, but they’re also laments, shouts of joy, and stories, pushing against the formal and unwavering rigors of the looped structures. Imaginary Numbers misses more than it hits for me, but when it does hit, the impact is memorable.

Available from Reverse Polish Notation’s web site.